elegiac
Americanadjective
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used in, suitable for, or resembling an elegy.
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expressing sorrow or lamentation.
elegiac strains.
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Classical Prosody. noting a distich or couplet the first line of which is a dactylic hexameter and the second a pentameter, or a verse differing from the hexameter by suppression of the arsis or metrically unaccented part of the third and the sixth foot.
noun
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an elegiac or distich verse.
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a poem in such distichs or verses.
adjective
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resembling, characteristic of, relating to, or appropriate to an elegy
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lamenting; mournful; plaintive
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denoting or written in elegiac couplets or elegiac stanzas
noun
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of elegiac
First recorded in 1575–85; from Middle French, from Latin elegīacus, from Greek elegeiakós; equivalent to elegy + -ac
Explanation
If there's one song on your playlist that always brings tears to your eyes, maybe it's because it has an elegiac quality. Elegiac means "mournful or sad." The adjective elegiac is useful when you're talking about music, a movie, a book, or another work of art that has a sorrowful tone. Sometimes elegiac specifically refers to something or someone that's gone: a person who's died, or a time in the past, especially if you feel a sense of longing for it. You can speak in an elegiac way, or sing an elegiac tune. The word comes from the Greek elegos, "poem or song of lament."
Vocabulary lists containing elegiac
The SAT: Words to Capture Tone, List 1
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The New SAT: Words to Capture Tone
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Death of a Salesman
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
In this longer and more structured form, what began as an intentional scattering of ashes becomes an elegiac letter home mediated by shipwreck.
From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 4, 2026
His patient, elegiac tone mimics the president’s reserve: The camera almost never moves, the musical cues are minimal, and there is virtually no unnecessary cutting.
From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 4, 2025
Cushioned between the more experimental songs, however, were the real crowd-pleasers: An elegiac version of Lucky, a beautifully twisted No Surprises and a genuinely sublime version of Weird Fishes/Arpeggi.
From BBC • Nov. 21, 2025
“Beloved Renegade” is as elegiac a gathering as “Speaking in Tongues” is a chilling one.
From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 17, 2025
And while Lefty stops to breathe it in, I’d like to take this opportunity to resuscitate—for purely elegiac reasons and only for a paragraph—that city which disappeared, once and for all, in 1922.
From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
